Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains

by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

  Domaire; that was his name, and Drish felt foolish for his error in calling him Dumount.

  “If it’s alright with you, Lt. Graye, I’ll wait for my friend here,” explained the Candaran liaison officer, “we have dinner plans… he was supposed to be on the authorized list. I hope it’s not a problem. I’d feel horrible if I was responsible for this young man’s detention.”

  “Well, Mr. Domaire, I am sorry, but I have my orders. This is an election year and I would hate for my father to lose his senate seat in the Imperium based on accusations of having sired a son who was lax in his duties. We have insurgents running amok through the streets, after all, and I need to make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be… when they’re supposed to be there. So let’s just get this formality done and over with without any further fanfare.” The officer produced a clip board and flipped back the pages, pausing as he asked for Mr. Larken’s identification papers. “This must be done according to procedure, sir, especially at this hour.”

  “Of course,” muttered Drish as he began fumbling through his case for the small imperial notebook that would prove his identity, hoping against all hope that his name was somewhere on that list. There were so many papers to rifle through that he found himself getting more flustered. He was on fire with embarrassment, no doubt glowing red hot like forged-iron when the document failed to materialize promptly.

  Great, thought the aristocrat, now I have to worry about getting myself shot.

  He could feel the colorless eyes of the two Hierarch soldiers locked him, and Drish became keenly aware of the deadly weapons they carried at their sides. Did I drop it when I dropped my case? He worried, believing he could almost remember seeing it laying on the floor. “I think I must have dropped it,” he ventured in defeat.

  “For your sake, I hope not,” replied the colonel gravely.

  Larken’s heart sank. Would they throw him in the stockades… leave him to rot for a year like they’d done to his father? They wouldn’t…would they? Unlike Arvis, Drish had taken the Oath of Allegiance to the Empire; he kept his mouth shut as well, and his head down; and that’s when Drish’s probing fingers happened upon the small, bound documents book. Triumphantly he pulled it out, catching a flash of his own photograph in sepia tones as he held it out to Graye. The noble born Candaran was surprised to find his hands shaking and his heart pounding in his chest. After two years of working here, he thought he’d be able to handle himself better.

  Colonel Graye snatched the trophy cleanly from his grip and snapped it open, pinning it under the board’s clip as he scanned through the list. Time seemed to be held upon the stern lips of the officer as he traced his eyes back and forth over the names.

  Of course my name isn’t on that list, of that Drish was certain. So now what? More guns, shackles, a cold cell for the night… maybe longer?

  “I’ll never understand you bean-counters and how you can sit at a desk and crunch numbers for as long as you do.” Graye removed Drish’s papers, folded them neatly, and handing them back. “You’re all set, Mr. Larken.”

  Drish began to laugh nervously as he tucked the document into his coat. “Well, once you have the numbers dancing in your head it’s hard to stop… you don’t want to lose track of them, you know?”

  “I’ll just have to take your word for it, Mr. Larken. Alright you two move along, and have a pleasant evening.”

  Chapter 2

  Once safely outdoors, Drish shivered in the early-winter chill that had frosted over King’s Isle, forcing him to pull his thin coat tightly around his frame just to preserve what little warmth he had left. Domaire, however, seemed heedless of the cold, and instead took the lead and guided them across the blustery parade grounds, sloshing ankle-deep through the muck between rows of dormant assault machines, and towering armored tread-rovers. Overhead, the clouds, blundering north into the underspires of the High Crown, were dumping the rest of their snow over the capital city in thick sheets. Around them, the administrative complex stood as nothing more than a collection of huddled light in an otherwise bombed-out wasteland of ruin and darkness, all of which had formally comprised the kingdom’s beautiful administrative heart. At a time of year when the city of Throne should have been festively decorated for the winter solstice holiday, the streets instead stood dark and empty, smelling not of balsam and nutmeg, but of gunpowder and char. Most of the city’s elaborate old structures were sadly nothing more than shameful brick husks, teetering on the verge of collapse.

  Despite Domaire’s continuous urging, Drish found it difficult to navigate the slush in his fine loafers, and so was left stewing in anger on how the old codger could be so spry in this mess.

  “Come, come,” hollered Domaire breathlessly, “follow me, we can’t talk here…not the Administrative Square, we’ll find someplace safe.” and the old man set a course north, towards the dragon-eyed glow of the Gods’ Bind.

  “Mr. Domaire,” barked Drish in irritation as he slipped and skittered across the cobble, hugging tightly to his bag to keep its contents from tumbling out again. Enough, this cold was too much and all he wanted was to retire to his cozy townhouse on Cooper Street; light a fire, warm his bones with a glass of brandy, and sit out the remainder of the storm. “Mr. Domaire! What could possibly warrant such a foray through this inhospitable weather? Whatever it is you have to tell me, can surely be said by now, sir.”

  When a trundling assault machine hissed and squealed up the road towards them, Domaire ducked from its inquisitive headlight, and retreated into a narrow side alley, leaving Drish with little choice but to follow, or risk being stopped again.

  Surrounded by the safety of high brick walls, the old man’s pace slackened, while back down at the end of the alleyway, the Iron machine tromped by like some laborious four-legged titan, hissing steam from its seams, while the hydraulics whinnied and sighed.

  Drish sighed his own relief when it was gone, but the emptiness of its passing revealed the towering skeleton of the Palace sitting up on its hilltop perch, not more than a kilometer’s distance behind them. Seeing it brought up too many painful memories of the privileges he’d lost. That once thriving structure had been a sensual delight of sights and sounds, food and festivities, but now it was nothing but a silent tomb, standing sentinel over a rotted city with its perpetual dead-eyed gaze.

  Domaire continued on, choosing a course that took them purposefully away from any city lights, the absence of which would only make the journey all the more difficult and dangerous. At least in the light all Drish had to worry about was a patrolling soldier’s questions, but in the shadows, he was just as likely to be shot by freedom fighters as imperials. It left the young ex-noble wondering just what the man’s problem was. Did the guard in the compound frazzle him that much, to warrant a reckless and paranoid course such as this?

  Many street blocks later and Drish was still no closer to an answer, having ventured far longer than he cared. He was at his wits end and ready to turn back and leave the old noble to freeze in the cold when Domaire finally stopped at the perimeter of a soot-blackened storefront. “How’s your father doing these days, Drish,” he asked breathlessly, “is everything alright?”

  “My father?” The subject caught Drish off guard and he scowled. It was an issue more tetchy than Domaire could have imagined. “If you mean, does he spend all the allowance I give him at the tavern, and then come staggering in at impossibly late hours—if he bothers to come home at all—then yes, he’s doing alright.”

  “I mean…” the old noble stumbled over his words. Clearing the phlegm from his throat, he plunged a hand into his coat pocket, and pulled out a slip of paper. “Here,” he offered the item with a trembling hand. Confused, Drish daintily plucked the paper from the man’s grasp, tearing it slightly as he did so. “What is this?” he said, maneuvering to catch some of the light from a working streetlamp down the road. “What am I looking at?”

  “It’s a list, my boy, from the Interior Security Bureau, bo
und for the Military Governor’s Office.”

  “A list from the snitches?” This was shaping up to be far more intriguing than Drish could have imagined. “What are you doing with it?”

  “It came to me through the Liaison office; on its way up the chain, but listen—”

  “Why are you showing me this?” interrupted Drish. He could feel the danger emanating from it, like a stench.

  Domaire looked paranoid and guilty. “I’m showing you this, because, as I was preparing to pass it along to my superior, I came across a name on that list; a name that I just couldn’t ignore.”

  A name…? Dread filled the young noble-born, and he didn’t need Domaire to say it, he already knew the answer. “Arvis Larken.”

  And just like that, it was like being back in the aftermath of the Great Skies War, when patrols of imperial soldiers scoured the streets for months on end touting similar lists. First, these lists had held the names of fugitive military personal and royal family members, then later they held Oath breakers, and eventually rabble-rousers and insurgents. It was one such list that Arvis had landed himself on a year into the occupation. The old Baron Larken had certainly liked to decry the Iron Empire, speaking to small crowds on the streets, or in taverns, or temples; anywhere there was an ear that was willing to listen; and one day that ear belonged to a snitch.

  “Yes, your father is on that list too, Drish, but—”

  “So what it for then…this list of yours? Sedition again? It can’t be much—”

  “Oh, but it is,” interrupted the old man with grave sobriety, “this isn’t just some list, my boy, this is the list—the list of major insurgent players here in Throne.”

  “Impossible,” blurted Drish loudly, as if being angry would make his father’s name disappear from the paper. “My father is a decrepit old man—a stroke’s made the left side of his body useless. He’s no good to the resistance… For the sake of the Pantheon Gods, he’s a drunk too! What good could he be to those insurgent thugs…a major player? Psh. Shows what they know.”

  In the far-off distance the drone of an imperial airship sounded over the wind, and they turned to catch its probing searchlight, sweeping down through the flakes of snow swirling above the old Commercial District a couple kilometers to the east. “Calm down, my boy,” chided the elder bureaucrat as he cast a paranoid eye up at that bloated behemoth.

  But Drish felt anything but calm. Calm down, he roared internally. Calm down! My father is being accused of terrorism, and this man wants me to calm down?

  “There’s more,” Domaire pointed to the list. “Take a look on the back, to the list of primary financiers.”

  “Financiers! Ha,” the young accountant scoffed. “Now I know this to be in error. My father lost all his assets; titles, lands, wealth—all of it when he refused to sign the Oath. He couldn’t finance a soap box to stand on let along the insurgency! He has no money.”

  Domaire signed heavily. “Just flip the page over, son.”

  Drish did as instructed and discovered the heading: ‘Primary Financiers’ typed in boldface print; and there beneath it—the very first name on that list—was ‘Drish Larken’. He had to look at it twice to make sure, and then a third time to study every letter as though perhaps the mistake was in that there was a man of a similar name; but all the letters matched.

  “My name… My name! How could this be! No, this is some sort of trick; they would have arrested me already if this were the case—”

  “Drish; that is the arrest order. The snitches can’t work without approval, you know that. This list was supposed to reach the military office this afternoon, and you, and everyone on that list, was supposed to be arrested before the end of the night. You were never meant to leave that office freely.”

  And then it dawned on Drish, washing through his guts like a sickness that threatened to loosen his bowels. “That old bastard,” mumbled the young Candaran, thinking on his father. “That dirty, old rat bastard…this is his doing. He’s been using the money that I’ve been allotting him to help finance the resistant. He hasn’t been pissing it all away on booze after all!”

  Domaire offered a sympathetic nod. “I feared as much, Drish. Your father and I were friends…once. Perhaps we’ve grown apart, given the different choices we made, but damn it, I still owe him…even after the hurtful things he said to me over taking the Oath. So that’s why I’m warning you now, Drish, for a debt I owe. Know this, if I could lose this slip of paper I would, but that’s not in my power to do so. I have to pass this list along; too many people know I have it; so there’s nothing I can do. But I’m an old man, so I can delay passing it along—till morning at most. So whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it quickly. I can give you that much.”

  The nobleman’s head swooned, he felt like sitting, even in the slushy mud beneath his feet. He was going to throw up. Arrest, the word hammered through his head with resonating implications. What has my father done to me? Again! How could he have used my money like that…and implicated me in terrorism as a result?”

  Domaire held out his hand, indicating for Drish to hand back the list, which the younger collaborator did without so much as realizing it. The next time his father’s old friend spoke it was distant and hard to hear over the sound of Drish’s own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

  “I’ve done what I can, son, now it’s up to you to figure out the rest,” and then Domaire turned abruptly, and before Drish could get another world in, he was already disappearing behind a curtain of falling snow.

  Chapter 3

  It was a long time before Drish realized Domaire was gone, and when he finally came to his senses, he found himself leaning against a brick wall with freshly falling snow piling thick on his shoulders. Cold rivulets of icy melt-water dripped from his soaked hair and coursing down his collar, setting him to shivering uncontrollably when they caressed his spine.

  Well, that was it. Drish’s name was on the list and he had to figure out his next move. Standing in the snow on a darkened street was getting him nowhere, and so he staggered home under the threatening weight of imperial decree.

  As soon as he stepped foot through the threshold of his townhouse on Cooper Street, Drish slammed the door behind him and bolted it tight. He slipped the case off his shoulder and let it fall to the ground, where it tipped over and spilled its contents across the wooden floor. Normally that would have infuriated the bureaucrat to no end, but his mind was racing with all the dreaded implications of what he’d learned, of what was coming, and what he could—if anything—do about it.

  Up the creaky stairs, to the second floor, Drish trudged mindlessly as his world spun madly out of control around him. He found it difficult to walk let alone think. Anger welled, with each step taken. In a rage he tore off his jacket and flung it against the expensive arm chair he had arranged on the second floor landing purely for aesthetics. Now it was just in the way, and he gave it a savage kick for good measure, slamming it into the wall and tearing the ornate wallpaper behind it. That only enraged him further. Drish became a feral animal, stalking through the house bringing ruin where he passed. First he tore the drapes closed, blocking out the sight of any prying eyes or drifting snowflakes, and that was just the beginning.

  It was hours before he settled down enough to think rationally. His tantrum had played out through the rooms of his flat like a tempest leaving a path of destruction in its wake. The landing chair and wall had been just the start. He had flipped over the oak dining room table, strewn velvet sofa cushions across the living room, broken most of the porcelain vases and the delicate end-tables they stood on, he’d even torn down a priceless painting of a moonlight glade—his favorite—and tore it in half, leaving it as a broken corpse of canvas and wood in the corner.

  When his blind rage had finally ended, Drish curled up in the middle of the living room floor and hugged his knees close to his chest. Near the end of his outburst he’d been trembling so hard in despair that he ripped an antique f
amily tapestry from the wall and wrapped it around his shoulders. Using it like a blanket, he sat staring into the empty fireplace across from him. In the dead ash he found a strange sort of comfort, and time ticked away under the steady clack of a clock.

  Drish wasn’t sure when his gaze moved, but suddenly it was locked on a bottle of wine set proudly on the mantle. He chuckled bitterly; this singular bottle of wine was his father’s most prized possession. The only thing of worth the man had left.

  “Coronation Wine,” sneered Drish, mocking his father’s deep and resonate voice. He stared venomously at the bottle’s waxen royal seal, before heaving himself to his feet to snatch that precious treasure from its perch of honor. “Finest wine in all the land, meant only for the lips of the Oberarch kings of Ascella, on the day of their coronation… Isn’t that what you also told me, Father?” He blew off a thick coat of dust that had settled upon it. “…or was that just another lie?”

  Pausing briefly to lust over the bottle’s gold-leafed label, he grabbed for the top like a mad man, snarling as he tried to claw through the waxen seal protecting the cork. He would drink every damn drop of this forbidden wine once it was off. That would show his father; would prove once and for all that the Unified Kingdoms were dead, and that no man of Ascella would ever ascend to the throne to drink it again. Drish would make sure of it. He would become the fool king, with lips stained red from over indulgence, singing the kingdom’s anthem like a bawdy funeral song to the minions of his broken personal effects.

  But he stopped.

  It was no fun to do it here, not by himself, the lesson would be wasted if his father was to simply come home to the bottle emptied. No, the irate son wanted his father to see the vulgar act with his own eyes… Drish fled from the townhouse clutching the bottle like a ghoulish spirit—like a vapor wraith—right into the growing storm without so much as a jacket. His rage kept him warm.

  The noble-born left his feet to their own devise, and they alone seemed to know the best way to get to the shanty tavern; the one that had become Arvis’s second home; a home where Drish thought his father was drinking away the nights, but as it seemed to have turned out, was actually the place his father plotted best how to ruin his son’s life. Drish staggered along the broad avenues, slipping beneath the silent glare of their restored shops and cafés, making his way towards the grimier byways and war-ravaged neighborhoods that skirted the charred remains of the slums. He knew he’d reached them when he looked up and found shabby tenements, close-set and stinking of filth and disrepair.